


Of Violets and Roses

by deliriumbubbles



Category: Smallville
Genre: Blueberries, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:55:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliriumbubbles/pseuds/deliriumbubbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Season 6 "Wither." Multiple minor character deaths, and two major.</p>
<p>A strange epidemic causes tragedy in Clark’s life. When Lex’s scientists fail to find a cure, Clark has to ensure that if Lex cannot be cured, he can at least keep him alive and sane until they find out who is behind the virus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Violets and Roses

_Thursday, 8:53am- LuthorCorp Tower_  
  
The weather was a little cold for September. Lex noted that as he stopped by the coffee shop next to the LuthorCorp building. It was a small business, but they knew him by name, had since the days when he was a mere plant manager for his father. Liked him more than they had Lionel, too.  
  
Lex stopped in briefly for his trademarked ‘extra-hot double cap no foam’ and a blueberry banana muffin. He hadn’t had breakfast that day. Hadn’t had time helicoptering between meetings in Smallville and Metropolis and had been running off of coffee all day. He took the muffin and to-go cup and headed out to his car.  
  
Not fifteen minutes later, as he picked at his muffin while driving back to Smallville, did Lana call him, requesting that he meet her at The Planet. Lex suggested that he wouldn’t be welcome, but Lana insisted that they needed him, so he assured her that he would come and got off the phone. He set the muffin aside, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin he kept in the car, and took a sharp turn back to Metropolis.  
  
Lex pulled up as close to the building as he could. Absently, he picked up the abandoned muffin, and when he reached The Planet, he peeled off the wrapper and tossed the muffin stump out for the pigeons.  
  
“I feel as though I have been summoned,” Lex stated, walking towards the group surrounding a small television with a bit of a cocky swish in his step. To his surprise, both his father and Martha Kent were sitting around beside the other reporters, Clark, and Lana. “What called for this little powwow?”  
  
“I’m surprised you don’t know, son. There’s quite the panic outside the LuthorCorp building.” His father walked closer to him, but then stopped suddenly, narrowing his eyes in almost… no. That couldn’t be fear in his father’s eyes. How uncharacteristic. What was he playing at? Lionel reached for his son with one hand, and Lex pulled back.  
  
“I had an early meeting this morning and was heading back to Smallville. Anyone care to share?”  
  
“Oh, god.” Lana covered her mouth with her hands. Lex felt everyone’s eyes on him. That strange little photographer, who looked like Eric Summers, got out an umbrella. Chloe smacked him on the arm.  
  
”What?” Lex demanded. Lana had started to cry. Lex moved forward to comfort her, but she jerked away, and Chloe grabbed her and held her still, petting her hair soothingly. Knowing that someone was comforting Lana put Lex a bit more at ease.  
  
“Lex, you… feeling okay?” Clark asked gently.  
  
“I’m feeling stared at and annoyed.”  
  
Just then he heard a loud popping sound. The entire room jumped and looked at him expectantly. This was getting a bit ridiculous. He headed to the window to see what was going on.  
  
He gaped in horror as he saw a pigeon swelling up into a dripping ball. It exploded.  
  
POP!  
  
Chloe’s curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she was soon at the window with him. She ran to her desk, grabbed a pair of latex gloves, and ran back. “Call the police. They need to quarantine that area out there.”  
  
Lex reached for his cell phone then stopped. The phone dropped from his hand unbidden, and he raised his fingers to his face, staring in disbelief.  
  
They were turning  _purple_.  
  
“Oh, god, Lex,” Lana sobbed.  
  
“Someone please tell me something,” Lex repeated softly.   
  
Chloe took a deep breath. “Where were you today?”  
  
“The castle. Work. The coffee shop next to work. My car,” he rattled off. Chloe nodded along as he told her. Lex noticed that most of the other reporters had fled the room while he had been looking out the window.  
  
“There’s… something going on at that shop, and we don’t know if you’re the carrier or if it started there.”  
  
“Wonderful. What’s going to happen?” He inadvertently looked back at the window. “That?! Is that-?”  
  
“The people at the shop went up right away,” Jimmy interrupted. “He should be splatter by now.”  
  
“Jimmy,” Martha hissed at his insensitivity.  
  
“Went up?” Lex asked. He moved towards the television, which was broadcasting something.  
  
 _Marita Sharpe went off in her car at 47 and 3rd about ten minutes ago, Alan. A young man, we haven’t identified him, got caught with the splatter and went off as well.  
  
Good God, Terrence.  
  
I know. It definitely started at the Buzzkill Café, from what the police can tell, and they’ve quarantined the area, but there have been a few extra explosions around town. The authorities are telling people to stay inside, and if someone looks like they are going to go up, run. Get under cover. This is one pitch you don’t want to catch. Back to you, Alan._  
  
The reporter buzzed on as they replayed a clip someone had made with their cell phone in the café. A woman came out of the kitchen, swelling up, her belly ballooning rapidly as her arms and legs distended with fluid so quickly that they were pushed out from her body. Her belly and breasts soon overtook the rest of her and she was screaming, screaming.  
  
It hurt.  
The pressure.  
Someone save her.  
Until…  
  
Lex wasn’t sure what came out of his mouth, but he was certain it was profane and not in English.  
  
“Lex, honey, it’s okay…”  
  
Several others who had been splattered with her juices began swelling in the shop. Lex ripped his gaze away from the screen.  
  
“That doesn’t seem like… it can’t be a meteor effect…Who the fuck would engineer something like that?” Lex demanded of no one in particular. Lionel grabbed the back of his neck, and Lex realized he had been walking backward.  
  
“Son, we need to get you down to one of your labs. Whichever one you think might be most helpful…”  
  
“Oh! He’s not the carrier. Look.” Chloe got on her laptop where she had downloaded some of the clips. “Or... maybe you  _shouldn’t_  look, Lex. Okay, here. The timestamp for the first… um… “  
  
“Blueberry?” Lex supplied tensely.  
  
“Ew. Um. Your meeting ended at 9:30?”  
  
“About. It was 9:50 before I was able to leave the building.” Lex didn’t mind dying. He minded dying like  _that_  very much.  
  
“Oh.  _Okay,_  then the first… blueberries happened before Lex even got into the shop. I wonder why the pigeons...”  
  
“It’s the muffins. Blueberry muffins. Well, I had a bit of the blueberry banana. Tossed the rest outside for the birds.” He rubbed his hand behind his head, anxiously. His eyes shifted around. Clark came up behind him. The two of them locked eyes. “Never had something like this one on the Wall of Weird, did you? I… I should be dead.”  
  
“We’re going to find a way to save you,” Lionel insisted. Lex opened his mouth. He felt as though he had to get his sense of bearing soon or his father would realize how ridiculously he was behaving. He couldn’t believe that Lionel hadn’t given him a censorious look already.  
  
“But I’m not. We…” He closed his eyes and put his purple-tinted hands in front of his mouth. “We have to find out where the blueberries in those muffins came from. And we should test my blood to see if we can’t find what’s resisting the… whatever it is that’s causing this. If someone’s trying to create an epidemic, we need a cure immediately.”  
  
Lana, trying to control her crying, moved to hold him. Lex pushed his hands out and moved backward.  
  
“Lana no! Stay away! We don’t know how many ways this could spread. You can’t touch me!”  
  
She nodded quietly and wiped away tears. “Oh…”  
  
“I know. Just, stay. Stay safe, okay?”  
  
Clark stood beside him. “Chloe and I can start trying to track down where those blueberries came from? You go to the lab.”  
  
Lex nodded and steeled himself. Time to take this thing out. By any means necessary.  
  
 _1:22pm- 33.1_  
  
When Clark and Chloe left the elevator into the secret level of the LuthorCorp building, they saw that Lex’s skin had taken on a distinctly more purple hue, and the buttons of his silk shirt were straining a little around his stomach. Clark shivered and thought of all the people on television who had blown up. He looked back at them, and Clark noticed that his  _eyes_  had taken on a violet color, and his face looked a little puffy.  
  
 _Juicy,_  Clark thought to himself solemnly.  
  
“Have you found anything? I’m afraid we’re at a dead end on the analysis here.”  
  
“Have you figured out why you’re kinda immune?” Chloe asked, pitching her voice in soft tones. Lex shrugged.  
  
“Not much more than what I figured to begin with. My mutation is fighting the foreign DNA. From what we can figured from our samples-” Lex informed them. Samples being the people who had exploded already, of course… “-is that we’re dealing with some sort of retrovirus that is restructuring the DNA from within.”  
  
He paused and put a hand to his stomach. That rush… the juice filling him up. It  _hurt._ Stretched and pushed areas that should not be stretched or pushed. What had those other people felt? He tried to put it out of his mind, but Clark was looking at him as though he were a fragile thing that he needed to whisk away and take care of. Possibly to his barn.  
  
“You?” Lex gave him a hard look.  
  
“We figured out that the muffins come from a larger bakery in town. They supply pretty much everyone in the area with their baked goods.”  
  
“Oh?” Lex asked in alarm. He moved over to a raised chair and sat town a little tiredly. The juice was starting to get heavy, and he wasn’t even that big. How would it feel when he…? No. Lex forced the thought out of his mind.  
  
“Yeah, so potential biiig problem here. Only no other coffee shops have reported a anything yet.”  
  
Lex nodded. “So just the Buzzkill. Then an individual swapped out the shipment? Or made sure that batch was made with their own brand?”  
  
“Not sure yet.”  
  
He nodded again and rubbed his belly. Clark reached for him. “Stop, Clark! Not without gloves.”  
  
“Are you okay? You… um.”  
  
“The pressure,” he answered simply in explanation. “We’re going to try to remove the juice surgically in a little bit.”  
  
“I’ll keep hunting, Lex,” Chloe promised. “Just hang on as long as you can. Either your guys will come up with something, or I’ll find the sick creep that came up with it and we’ll squeeze the information out of them.”  
  
The two men looked at her.  
  
“What did I say?”  
  
Lana hovered around them quietly, torn between crying and screaming. When they’d first brought her here, she and Lex had quite the fight over whether she should have been briefed as to the existence of this lab. Lex adamantly insisted that with the thousands of projects in his purview he could not possibly keep her abreast of them all, and she wouldn’t have been able to keep them straight if he did. They would spend all of their time talking about his business, and it would be a conversation she largely didn’t have the education to understand.  
  
Lana had naturally interpreted the comment as an insult to her intelligence and began making baseless accusations that Lex lied to her on every opportunity, didn’t trust her, and was possibly sleeping with other women. Maybe men.  
  
Lex had turned from her coldly and began working with the doctors, saying briefly: “Your sense of timing to pick a fight is quite poor. You can degrade my character and morals another time. At the moment, we need to do some tests.”  
  
So Lana seethed in the corner. Angry at herself. Angry at him for being so coolheaded when she tried to manipulate him. Angry at Chloe for being closer to him right now, physically, than she was.  
  
“Chloe?” Lana stopped her hurrying friend as she headed for the elevator.  
  
”Hey… how are you holding up?”  
  
Lana gave her a broken smile. “If you find out where they got these blueberries… will you be able to save Lex?”  
  
“I… um.” Chloe shifted awkwardly. “I want to tell you yes, but I don’t really know. This isn’t a meteor rock thing. It’s pretty obvious that these berries were engineered specifically. Until we find out what the purpose was, we’re working blind. I mean, the scientists have some samples from the blueberries and tons from Lex and some from the… um. Others.”  
  
Lana felt hot tears spilling down her face again.  
  
“It looks bad. But it’s looked bad before,” Chloe added hopefully. “And we got through it. So… hang on, because we’re all working on this together.”  
  
Lana nodded and took a seat over by the door. After a few moments, Lex came up to her, with his hands in his back pockets. She looked up and focused on the growing gap between the edges of his shirt over his stomach. She could see the stained skin underneath; he was awfully purple now.  
  
“Lana, I’m going to let the doctors try some surgeries. They have enough samples of my blood before and after this… to be able to go forward with trying for a cure for others who become infected in case anything-”  
  
“I don’t care about them.”  
  
“Lana…”  
  
“I don’t. I  _don’t_. I just want you to be okay.” A question burned hotly in her mind, and she peered up at him with accusing eyes. “Why do they have so many samples of your blood from before today?”  
  
Lex was quiet.  _Secrets._  
  
“Can’t you tell me?” She asked bitterly. Lex crouched down to her level. A button popped off his shirt, and he glared at his expanding middle. He had one hand out trying to keep his balance and another against the curve of his belly. He knew he was nowhere close, but he was already feeling like he might burst.  
  
With a sigh, he looked up at her again. “I thought you knew. I thought it was a given that I was one of the mutants. Chloe had such a large file on me, I assumed you had…”  
  
“No.” She turned away from him. She couldn’t see him like that any longer. Lex sighed again, and she heard him stumble and make a pained noise trying to get back to his feet.  
  
 _2:17pm- 33.1_  
  
The doctors swarmed around Lex, shouting orders and frantically trying to stop the bleeding. It was their second try in “de-juicing” him. He was going septic. Lana pressed herself against the glass frantically.  
  
A few moments, later one of the doctors came out to tell Lana and Martha not to expect surgical intervention to help. They couldn’t find a repository to let out the pressure; it was all intermingled with his own blood. They couldn’t bleed the juice out without him bleeding to death. Lana crumpled into Martha’s arms. She couldn’t even go into the operating room to comfort Lex when he woke up because of the contamination risk.  
  
He hated waking up alone in hospitals. She remembered him telling her that once.  
  
 _3:42pm- 33.1_  
  
Lex had made his way into the bathroom to get away from the doctors and his father, and Lana, who had completely fallen to pieces on him, accusing him in one breath and crying into Martha’s shoulder the next. He was waiting for Clark to return again. Not that the information would help him much at this point. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and barely recognized the bloated creature before him. His cheeks pouched out from the swelling. They had given him an oversized white shirt and a pair of drawstring grey sweatpants, which were beginning to stain with juice. His belly was already stretching the fabric. He looked like he was fucking pregnant. He cupped his churning middle and collapsed onto the toilet seat.  
  
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t die like this. Instead of dying quickly like the others, his mutation would make it slower and more painful. Would leave those around him remembering him not as the powerful businessman he’d made of himself but as a pitiful ballooned bathysphere of a man.  
  
He had been sitting there for a few minutes before he realized that he was crying. Thank whoever his father wasn’t there to see him break down. He raised a hand to wipe the tears away. No… not tears. Juice. He blinked and looked at the dark liquid on his hands.  
  
“If… How else might it come out?” Lex wondered. An amazing thing that he’d noticed was that he hadn’t eaten since this… process began. He wasn’t hungry at all. He hadn’t used the washroom either. But maybe… if tears could work? Lex struggled to get to his feet. He set his legs wide and tried to hoist himself up, but found it impossible. The muscles of his stomach were pushed too far out. Experimentally, he licked his lips, and leaned as far over to the sink as he could manage. He spit.  
  
There was a little bit. If he couldn’t go up, he could go down. He wiggled his way to the edge of the toilet seat and tried to ease himself down to the floor. He rolled over until he was on his knees and lifted the lid. He tried to throw up.  
  
“Dammit, if teenage girls can do it, why can’t I?” he sobbed angrily. He leaned back against the wall and looked down at his huge belly. He reached out and sloshed it. This is how everyone was going to remember him. Engorged and repulsive. Lex Luthor of the Tremendous Girth. Experimentally he looked down to see how purple he was in other places and then it hit him. How he could get some of the juice out…  
  
 _3:57pm- 33.1_  
  
Clark bounded back into the lab with Chloe on his heels. She hadn’t seen him this determined to be with Lex in a long time. All their petty arguments seemed… well. What they were. Petty and pointless and mostly baseless. They didn’t matter in the face of a crisis as they shouldn’t have mattered in the face of the last.  
  
“Where is he?” Clark asked.  
  
“He went to the bathroom a little while ago,” Lana answered. She had finally stopped crying and was sitting with Martha quietly. “It’s… how long has he been in there?”  
  
“I think he probably just went to get away from us. This has been pretty intense.” Martha stroked Lana’s hair. “He’s worried about you.”  
  
“He shouldn’t be worried about  _me_. He should be worried about himself!”  
  
“I’m sure he is, but he knows that you’re frightened and scared. He wants to protect you,” Martha whispered to her, rubbing her shoulders. Clark shifted his feet anxiously.  
  
“Well?” Lionel asked. Chloe sat beside them.  
  
”I have a lead.”  
  
“I’ll go check on him.” Clark headed in the direction of the restroom before anyone could say otherwise. He x-rayed the room, and seeing Lex’s swollen form struggling on the floor, he flung the door open.  
  
Lex panted, covered in beads of purple sweat, streaks of juicy tears down his face, with his sweatpants down and his hand…  
  
“Close the  _fucking_  door.”  
  
Clark obeyed. “What are you-?”  
  
It was obvious what he was doing. Clark blinked.  
  
“Is that helping?”  
  
“A little?” Lex huffed. “I can only do this so much. I’m not that maneuverable right now.”  
  
Clark bent down and put his hand on Lex’s juice-swollen cock.  
  
“Clark!”  
  
“I got a little splattered out in the field earlier. This can’t hurt me,” Clark told him, starting to pump. Lex leaned back in exhaustion, as Clark began pushing the juice out of him. A small frown etched into his forehead as he concentrated. He moved the other to Lex’s belly and pushed down a little bit.  
  
“Ohhhh….” Lex moaned.  
  
“Does that hurt?”  
  
“Yes, but... don’t stop… god… anything to get that pressure off me.”  
  
Clark slid his hand under the soaked shirt and began to massage Lex’s taut berry belly as he went along. The smell of it was incredible. He wondered…  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Clark wrapped his lips around Lex’s cock and began to suck vigorously. He motioned for Lex to keep rubbing his belly.  
  
Lex tried not to moan too loudly. Oh, the sense of release… Clark placed his own hands against Lex’s legs and began to rub them, squeezing him, forcing the juice to come out his pores or further into his abdomen where it could come out. Lex came once, hard and gushing into Clark’s mouth and he swallowed and swallowed, and kept going, sucking harder. Lex pressed his head against the wall and bit his lip. Juice ran down his chin as he tried not to scream out against the intensity. Clark took him all the way into his mouth and began to move his fingers along the back of Lex’s blue balls, hoping to get him to come harder and release more juice.  
  
After the third time Lex came, Clark pulled back and looked at his own juice-swollen belly, but he knew he was just really full. Ugh. Lex’s stomach had gone down considerably. He looked a bit deflated from the experience, and exhausted, but Lex melted against the wall in relief.  
  
“Where the hell did you learn to suck cock like that?”  
  
“I’m really flexible.” Clark offered him a hand and maneuvered Lex back to his feet. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”  
  
When they came out of the washroom, Lana stormed up to them and demanded, “What were you two doing in there?!”  
  
It had been obvious from the noise what they had been doing in there. That and Clark’s lips were stained with the telltale bluish-purple Lex juice. Then she got a look at Lex. “You’re smaller.”  
  
“Clark helped,” he said simply. Clark blushed.  
  
Lana stood in amazement. She drew a bit of her hair behind her ear, not knowing how to react. Lionel stood behind her and Martha with an inscrutable expression.  
  
Clark frowned in embarrassment. Everyone was staring at them. His  _mom_  had heard him having sex! “I didn’t want to molest your boyfriend, but…”  
  
“I don’t want to die,” Lex said sharply.  
  
“I don’t want him to die. It worked?” She moved as closely as she could without touching Lex.  
  
“See for yourself.” Lex lifted his shirt. Tears sprung to her eyes again.  
  
“Then you have permission to molest my boyfriend.”  
  
 _Tuesday 12:46pm- Lex’s Penthouse_  
  
Over the next few days, with no cure in sight, Lex moved into the penthouse in Metropolis with Lana by his side and a ‘juicing’ room where Clark would come by at least once a day to ‘help.’ It was located close enough to the building that he would be able to reach the lab in minutes if they came up with anything.  
  
Lana turned a blind eye and wore latex gloves all around the house.  
  
Being so indisposed, Lex found that he had to ‘temporarily’ hand the company back over to Lionel. He was certain he would not be getting it back without a fight.  
  
“You think Lionel is behind this?” Clark asked, after a mid-day juicing. He sprawled back on the juicing room bed, which he had to admit was pretty comfortable. He figured it would have to be. Lex would be feeling very swollen and sore by the time he needed Clark in here.  
  
“Not unless he’s decided to keep the throne and live forever.” Lex shrugged and leaned into Clark. He wasn’t sure what “function” holding onto Clark after juicing actually had in this arrangement, but he couldn’t break himself of it. “I’m afraid this is going to have long term damaging effects on you, Clark. You shouldn’t swallow.”  
  
“You taste good.” Clark looked at the alarmed expression on Lex’s face and sighed. “The worst thing that’s happened to me is that my jeans are getting a little tight. You’re high in calories.”  
  
Clark showed him the bit of pudge he’d gained over the past few days. Lex rested his head on Clark’s shoulder. “There’s so much we don’t know about this. How can you be sure that it won’t do something that you can’t see?”  
  
“You said that these berries were genetically engineered to change human DNA?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Then you know why it won’t hurt me.”  
  
Lex curled into Clark’s arms and kissed him fiercely. Clark ran his fingers over Lex’s stained skin. After juicing he looked much less purple, but the color remained faintly, a reminder that Lex was on borrowed time right now. Lex hadn’t cried since the first day when Clark had caught him in the bathroom, but he knew that this was hard on him, and he wondered which act Lex had been more humiliated for getting caught doing. Crying or masturbating.  
  
Actually, Clark was pretty sure he knew the answer. Clark had no problem crying, though.  
  
But only in the barn when he went home. He wanted Lex to see him confident and strong and maybe believe this was going to work out all right.  
  
 _Saturday, 12:02am- Penthouse_  
  
Lex lay on the bed, exhausted from Clark’s ‘help,’ and a long day of pouring over data from the labs at 33.1. Lana had no idea what the space had been for prior to their current tragedy, but she was glad now that Lex had the place prepared for just such an emergency. It was hard to keep the faith when Clark was in charge of keeping her lover alive. He wasn’t much use to her right now actually. He was far too afraid that she might catch the Blue Plague, as the newspapers called it, to let her touch him, and he’d always been jumpy about being touched before anyway. Which was weird and he wouldn’t talk to her about that.  
  
Except their night in front of the fire. She smiled and walked up to his bed softly. Fire had always made her feel sexy for some reason she couldn’t remember. Drawing the covers back, she looked at Lex’s body. He was a light purple, but mostly white, and although he was slightly plump from the juice swelling anew inside him, she could see his ribs sticking through. The fact of the matter was, the doctors had told them that Lex still needed to eat a little. But he wasn’t eating. The problem was that after Clark juiced Lex, he and Lana noticed that Lex was getting thinner every day. The juice fed him only a little, and everything tasted like blueberries for him. It made him gag and turn away from any food given to him.  
  
Lex could burst. Or he could starve to death. Lana decided that she would have to get Lex to eat something, somehow. She traced a naked finger over his gently curved belly and wondered if her tight, muscular boyfriend would ever be returned to her. If this was how it was going to be, until he asked her to kill him or Clark exploded himself from the weight gain. She put what they did together in the juicing room out of her mind. Lex loved her. Clark loved her. They wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort if it weren’t necessary to keep Lex alive. It was really her they wanted. Clark was sort of a hero that way. And Lex was so brave, giving the doctors whatever samples they needed to create a cure.  
  
Just the other day, Victoria Hardwick had somehow contracted the Blue Plague and burst in front of her entire board, who in turn caught it and exploded within minutes. The news had reported on the Hardwick “Flood,” that morning.  
  
Lana leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. Then walked softly back to her room.  
  
 _Saturday, 9:19am- Penthouse_  
  
Clark was only coming by to check on them. They had given him a key. He told himself that was the only reason, that he was worried about the situation and Lex’s health.  
  
It wasn’t because it was growing harder and harder for him to be away from Lex.  
  
He opened the door easily and stood frozen at the sight before him. His insides turned to ice water as he looked over the carpet soaked in juice and blood. White walls were now painted fresh in a wide spatter of violet and rose red. Why hadn’t Lana called him if Lex had gotten worse? Clark fell to his knees amidst the gore and began to sob.  
  
“Oh, Lex. Oh god Lex no…” He muttered to himself over and over that Lex couldn’t be dead. He’d just checked him the night before. He had been fine… he should have stayed with him. By his side in case the infection got worse, accelerated faster...  
  
As his sobs calmed, Clark’s hearing picked up what seemed to be a high-pitched whimper. He stood slowly, ignoring the smear of various juices against his jeans trudged deeper into the apartment. He walked through the hallway, where a section of intestines had stuck fast to the wall. Soon he found the source of the pitiful sound and walked into the room.  
  
He almost began to cry again as he saw Lex, shirtless and whole. There was a spray of blood across his face, and his eyes were empty. And he was cradling something to his chest.  
  
“Lex… oh god, Lex.”  
  
Lex didn’t answer, but rocked back and forth. He made that high, pained noise. Clark leaned down and put his hands around Lex. “Lex Lex Lex…”  
  
He chanted it softly and rested his chin on Lex’s shoulder.  
  
“…murdereder.”  
  
“What was that?” Clark pressed his face into the curve of Lex neck. He looked down into Lex’s arms. It was a  _skull_. Clark drew back sharply.  
  
Lex made the noise again. Clark stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. Most of the flesh on the skull was gone, or split at the seams from the pressure of the juice. But the long, silky black hair…  
  
“Told… she didn’t stay away… god I murdered her.” Large juicy tears began to roll down Lex’s frozen face. “She god… oh god… murdered her.”  
  
“You’re coming home with me, Lex.” Clark choked on his own tears. He pried the skull out of Lex’s hands and began to drag him away. “Lex, come on. You can’t stay here.”  
  
“Kill me.”  
  
“What?” Clark stopped, but still held Lex tightly.  
  
“Kill me. Please kill me, Clark. Please kill me. Kill me.”  
  
The gravely broken voice rattling out of such a strong man chilled Clark to his very core.  
  
“I won’t. You aren’t going to die,” Clark insisted. He took Lex more forcefully and made him come along. By the time they had reached the car, Lex was wholly leaning on him. Clark strapped him into the passenger seat and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’m going to make all of this okay.”  
  
Lex didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything else for a long time.

 

_Two weeks later- The Kent Farm_  
  
Any weak enjoyment Clark got from juicing Lex was killed in the weeks to come with the knowledge that Lex himself was mostly not really there. He felt like he was taking advantage of Lex when he forced the juice out of his body. Martha withheld her judgment when Clark took Lex into his bed and refused to sleep anywhere else. He put plastic sheets on the bed and held Lex closely at night, waiting for him to come back to him.  
  
They’d both been present at Lana’s funeral. A freshly squeezed Lex wearing a black suit leaned limply against Clark. The papers had ‘outed’ them, and for that Clark felt somewhat guilty, too. Yes, they were having sex every day, often more than once, now that Lex’s immune system was having a harder time fighting off the changes the retrovirus wanted to make to him. Yes, Clark had pretty much been holding him, but frankly, if he hadn’t been holding him up, Lex probably wouldn’t have moved from his bed to go to the funeral, and Clark knew that Lex would have wanted to attend.  
  
And it hurt him so much when he realized he was thinking of Lex in the past tense. Clark admonished himself not to sell Lex short. He’d been through hell and back more times than Clark could count and certainly more times than Clark thought he could survive himself. Lex was going to make it.  
  
When the two of them had walked by her casket, Lex responded for the first time in weeks, and put a hand on the casket, feeling the slick wood. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Clark leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  
  
“Look, they’ve been best friends for five years,” Chloe had snapped to a reporter from the local news station. “They both dated Lana and cared for her deeply. Lex has been sick for  _weeks_  with this horrifying disease. If you want to call them queer for leaning on one another, go ahead, but you’re just making it harder and harder to define what straight is. Pretty much every behavior is faggy to you people these days, isn’t it?”  
  
The Inquisitor ran a story the next day misquoting her and outing her as a dyke and Clark’s beard. Jimmy commented that they had her bearding for the wrong guy. He got smacked again and put out on the couch.  
  
Both the Blue Plague and the juicing were wearing Lex’s body down. He had no energy, although the doctors admitted that it probably had to do with both his physical condition and the post-traumatic stress. Lex didn’t speak, nor did he sleep, and only Clark could force food into his mouth. He and Chloe had continued their search for the creator of the retrovirus, which, while it had slowed down, was still popping people randomly across the city. The remains of Morgan Edge, or so they had determined from dental records, had joined the growing samples being analyzed by Lex’s doctors shortly after Lana’s funeral.  
  
One morning Lex came down of his own volition from Clark’s room, although when Martha stepped toward him, Lex jumped back so hard he hit the wall. “NO!”  
  
“I won’t touch you. I’m staying right here, hon. I just wondered if I could get you anything?”  
  
He blinked as though he didn’t fully understand. The fog of the past few weeks was lifting a little bit, but it was still hard to force himself back into this world. His father came closer, and despite Lex’s violent flinch, took his hand and led him to the table, where they tried unsuccessfully to get him to eat breakfast. Martha and Lionel started up a conversation, hoping that a little normality would make things easier for Lex.  
  
He simply sat there, as his father squeezed his limp hand. When Clark returned from his chores, he sat next to Lex and with his arms around him and a little encouragement, Lex ate some eggs, and Clark fed him some potatoes. Lex wouldn’t touch the juice.  
  
“Have… the doctors…?”  
  
“I’m afraid there’s no new news, son,” Lionel remarked. Lex stared at the table despondently.  
  
“Has anyone else become infected?”  
  
“A few. But none for three days.”  
  
Lex nodded. “Good.”  
  
His head turned as he watched Clark leave. The boy was getting a bit of a bubble butt. Lex banished the thought and replaced it with broaching a discussion about Clark’s health. He’d bulked up since the beginning of this ordeal, and he knew Clark must be trying to get more exercise to keep his weight down. They couldn’t have the  _both_  of them waddling around the farm.  
  
A few days later, it was evening before Clark came in to juice him. Lex lay on the bed, his round tummy pointing upward and one leg thrown over the side. Now that he was coming around, his mind was racing again, trying to put the pieces together. Who had done this, and why? Had they known that he wouldn’t die? How had they created a virus that would broach his kick ass immune system to begin with? He had dismissed the idea that there was any chance to this attack. The tainted blueberries could have been mass distributed if it were some bizarre sort of terrorist activity or the work of some crazed scientist. It could be that someone had done this as part of a larger experiment, but it would be foolish to do so. Lex knew from experience that one needed to control these experiments and the sample size was not large enough by a long shot. The simple fact that they had chosen the café where he went almost every day for coffee and a muffin, blueberry banana when they were available, was fairly telling.  
  
He closed his eyes to wait for Clark. He’d heard the doctors mention that the stress on his body would likely cause all of his membranes to degrade soon enough if his heart didn’t give out first. He prayed to whatever deity might be listening to kill him sooner rather than later.  
  
 _Her scream jolted him out of his exhausted sleep. His stomach muscles still refused to obey him properly even when he wasn’t round as a beach ball, and Lex struggled to his feet, wasting precious time.  
  
“Lana!” He bolted into her room and froze in front of her expanding figure.  
  
“Lex!!” Big juicy tears poured down her face. Her breasts were so engorged with juice that they hung to her middle dripping obscenely, and her ass and legs were splitting the seams of her flannel pajamas. She waddled closer to him but couldn’t keep her balance and fell to her side. Lex’s heart beat frantically, and he feared that she would pop just from falling to the ground. He flew to her side and propped her up.   
  
“I’ll call the doctors,” he said, trying to pull her heavy bloated body to the side of the room away from anything sharp.  
  
“Don’t leave me!” she wailed. Lex was torn.   
  
“Just… let me call. Maybe… god.” He ran from the room, and she began to howl for him. He returned as quickly as his abused body would let him and knelt beside her.  
  
“Fuck you! Fuck you, you fucking pig! Don’t leave me!” she shrieked. Her face was rounding out, the skin around her eyes stretching surreally. Her lips plumped up, but her mouth stretched around the flowing juice wide like an eerie forced smile.  
  
“They don’t have a cure, but maybe we can…” Lex held a razor he’d gotten from the bathroom and pressed it against his wrist. Lana’s stubby hand swatted at him.  
  
“Don’t. Don’t do it, Lesh.” Her arms were so fat with juice she couldn’t bend or move them. Her legs looked like sausages, and her ass was expanding underneath her like an overstuffed cushion. Lex’s eyes fixed on her swelling breasts and the stretching engorged belly that just continued to grow and grow and grow. He could barely get close to her; it had swelled so effectively, jutting out all around her.  
  
“I’m so sorry. So sorry. Let me  _try_. My mutation has kept me alive. Maybe it’ll work to help your system fight this off!”  
  
“I wather be dead dan be a mushant,” she slurred. It stung, and Lex felt sick. Her hatred for what he was felt like a blow to the face. He looked away from her. “Beshides. Doctorsh shaid you… can’t be cut… preshhure…”  
  
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted.  
  
She tried to shake her head, but couldn’t. “No. Worth… Lesh.”  
  
“What?” Lex caressed her spherical face with his hand. The belly was pushing him away, but he leaned against her bulk, trying to hear what she was saying.  
  
“Don’t… love you. But… pleash.”  
  
Lex felt tears stinging his eyes.  
  
“Pleash live. Care bout… both…”  
  
Lex was pushed away from her face. He kept reaching for her, but couldn’t get near. Juice was spurting down her breasts, and Lex tried in vain to squeeze the juice out of them, but it was coming too fast and soon he could no longer reach them. He settled for grabbing her hand and holding it until her sides expanded and began to absorb the rest of her body. Her belly, looming largely and topped with a rounded bulge that was her navel, had subsumed all of her. Her flesh was so tight that it was transparent, and Lex could see the juice sloshing around inside her.  
  
Lana Lang, the overripe blueberry, almost filled the entire room.  
  
“I loved you, Lana. I did, I swear. You were always like my little sister, and I always wanted to protect you and keep you safe.”  
  
Her eyes were almost hidden in the swollen mass of her face, but she looked at him. Whatever expression she might have tried to convey was lost from the stretching of her features.  
  
The explosion knocked him against the wall._  
  
“Lana!!”   
  
Lex woke abruptly, sobbing and screaming, strong arms holding him still. He could still taste the rush of her juice and blood in his mouth, the sound of the explosion ran in his ears. All he could remember of her was her deformed blueberry face.  
  
“Shhh… it was a dream, Lex. It was a dream.”  
  
Now he realized that Clark was the one holding him. He’d fallen asleep. But it wasn’t a dream. He looked into Clark’s eyes.  
  
“I knew you’d come back to us eventually.”  
  
“She asked me to live. She said she cared about us.” Lex did not repeat the other things she had said. Although he would never forget. Clark curled next to him.  
  
“Are you going to take her advice? Are you going to try?”  
  
Lex looked down at himself. He hadn’t been asleep that long, but he was filling up, nonetheless. Lex winced visibly from the pressure building inside him. His burgeoning belly pressed between him and Clark. “I don’t know that this is in my hands anymore.”  
  
“I’m going to help you as much as I can, but I need you to care if you live.” Clark turned Lex’s face to his own. Lex shook a little in his arms. He surprised Clark by meeting his lips, fiercely. “Do you still want to die?”  
  
“I don’t mind dying. I don’t want to die, no.”  
  
Clark kissed him back and moved his arms around Lex’s plumped backside. “I have some work to do.”  
  
Lex curled his face into Clark’s shoulder, and Clark frowned at Lex’s obvious distress.  
  
“Tell me. What’s wrong?”  
  
“This… god.”  
  
Clark began to kiss along the purple scalp. “A little too impersonal, even for Lex Luthor.”  
  
“Impersonal is wonderful with people I don’t know.”  
  
Clark lifted Lex into his arms and set him up against the headboard. Normally, he did his job as effectively as he could without taking off his clothes. Today he sat before Lex and stripped off his shirt, tossing it to the side of the bed. Lex felt his mouth twitching. Clark had a cute little roll of flab developing. No wonder he had a bubble butt.  
  
“Okay, that is not how you’re supposed to react to my alien sexfulness.”  
  
“Sexful is not a word,” Lex replied, sounding more like himself than he had in a long time. Clark walked up close to him on his knees, and Lex reached over and tweaked his tummy.  
  
Clark opened his mouth in mock offense. “This is ALL love chub! How dare you pinch me!”  
  
Lex tried not to laugh. Clark leaned over and sloshed his belly like an overfilled water balloon. Lex looked at him skeptically and opened his mouth as he looked at his inflated body insecurely. Clark, however, didn’t let him look long. He caught Lex’s open mouth in a soft, sweet kiss and rubbed his hands over Lex’s tight, purple flesh.  
  
“I love touching you. I don’t… I haven’t been doing much of this because I feel guilty for liking it so much. You’re only letting me do this because you’re sick, and it feels unfair to you, you know.”  
  
Lex gingerly ran his fingers over Clark’s defined chest. Even chubby, Clark was quite the hunk. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. I think if… I’ve been obsessed with you for a long time. It’s not like I would have let just anyone come in there and help push this juice out of me like that. I don’t… like being touched.”  
  
Lex felt embarrassed. Since when was he ever shy?  
  
“But it’s okay when you do it.”  
  
Clark cradled the back of Lex’s head and began kissing him anew. He moved down to the soft skin of Lex’s neck, brushing his lips against the flesh, gently kissing, nibbling. Lex let out a soft moan.  
  
“I  _love_  touching you,” Clark repeated. He trailed his tongue along Lex’s Adam’s apple and continued kissing, nibbling along this neckline. He let out a hot breath against the wet surface and massaged the back of Lex’s neck.   
  
Lex’s hands clutched Clark’s shoulders, and he leaned into Clark’s touch. Soon their lips met again, and Clark sucked on Lex’s lower lip, taking in some juice, then licked along his top lip. Lex accepted Clark’s tongue, sucked on the tip a bit, and moved his tongue against Clark’s. Clark could feel one of Lex’s hand moving further down, and firmly grasping a rounded cheek. His lips quirked as they kissed one another leisurely.   
  
Clark began to slowly slide his hands under Lex’s oversized shirt. He continued to kiss him for a moment then had to sit back to take the shirt off his partner. Lex hesitated and held Clark’s hands.  
  
“All of you. I want to touch all of you.” He lifted the shirt over Lex’s taut belly and began to kiss along the curve. “There is no part of you that I don’t find perfectly delicious.”  
  
Lex laughed in spite of himself, and the juice sluiced around. Clark pressed his cheek to Lex’s belly, feeling the motion. “What are you  _doing_?”  
  
”Loving you. God, you could make anything sexy, Lex.”  
  
Lex cocked a brow, not quite believing him, but he removed his shirt regardless, and soon Clark was lapping against his nipples, sucking the juice there. It wasn’t as effective as sucking his cock, but it felt incredibly good. There was a lot of pressure all over his front. Clark slid his hands over Lex’s swollen body as he took in his juices, and Lex threaded his fingers through Clark’s soft, black hair.  
  
Clark’s hands were all over his body, massaging him, squeezing him in places that were too tight already. Lex felt his cock grow hard. It had been such a long time, it seemed, since he’d  _wanted_  sex. Clark stood and shucked off his pants. Lex smiled gently and began to slip off his sweats.  
  
“Oh, yeah.” Clark grinned at the sight of Lex’s juicy cock standing up to greet him. His own was more than excited enough, but Lex had never gotten to see it before in their many sexual encounters. Clark had been so focused on relieving Lex, and feeling guilty when Lex was out of it, that he pretty much jerked off in the shower after he’d finished ‘helping.’ Now…  
  
Clark crawled back onto the bed and ran his hands slowly over Lex’s thighs. “What are you up for?”  
  
“I… not sure. But we can stop if we hit a problem, right?”  
  
Clark nodded. He reached over into his nightstand and pulled out some lube. He reached around and squeezed Lex’s ass.  
  
Lex’s cock spurted with some precome and juice. Clark raised his brows.   
  
“Then, let’s try something.” Clark flipped Lex’s legs up. “Let me know if anything starts to hurt.”  
  
“Have you done this before?”  
  
“Um.”  
  
“Flexible, my juice-inflated ass. You’ve had boyfriends.”  
  
“I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve just…” Clark shrugged. He shifted so that Lex’s legs were resting on his shoulders, and he squirted some lube onto his fingers. Lex tried to relax. “Have you done this before?”  
  
“I’m not exactly the type to take things lying down.”  
  
“We can go slow.” Clark smiled and inserted his pinky finger. Lex flinched so hard that he stopped. “Feel okay?”  
  
Lex nodded rapidly.  
  
“My idea is that neither of us are going to be lying down for long.”  
  
Lex looked back at him with a mix of worry and interest. Clark left the finger there, trying to let Lex get used to it.  
  
“Maybe we shouldn’t. I’m a little worried… if you’ve never-“  
  
“What’s the worst that could happen?”  
  
Clark slowly worked the finger in and out of Lex’s ass and leaned over to kiss him. He thought that if he didn’t actually have to make Lex come rather forcefully, he would have been good just kissing, sucking, sliding his tongue against Lex’s. Damn that man was a good kisser.   
  
Without stopping, he inserted another finger. Lex made a small gasp. After a moment, Lex was squirming against his hand.   
  
“Yeah. Yeah, better?”  
  
“Oh… unnn…”  
  
He slid in another finger and moved down to Lex’s cock. He twirled his tongue around the tip first. He knew the juice was making him a little fat, but he figured they could find a way to cut back on that eventually. Or he could start Pilates or something. He kissed the soft, circumcised tip and began to take a little bit of it into his mouth. While moving his fingers in and out of Lex, he began to lick along his cock. Then using his other hand to stroke the base, he took it into his mouth.   
  
Clark had only been partially lying when he told Lex his blowjob skills came from flexibility. He was, though. Very. And he intended to prove it. He removed his fingers, stroked some more lube onto his cock, and slowly entered the tip of it into Lex’s ass.  
  
“Okay?”  
  
Lex’s voice sounded a little strained. “Damn, you’re a big boy, Clark.”  
  
Clark laughed and waited for Lex to motion him forward. His face looked a bit pained, and Clark was sure Lex really felt more than a little too full right now, so he waited for another impatient wave before he pushed on a little more.  
  
“You’re trying to kill me from suspense, aren’t you?”  
  
“I’m trying not to pop you or rupture anything. My delicate virgin flower.”  
  
Lex snickered and their hands intertwined and Clark kissed him again, pushing in further a little at a time. When he was in most of the way, he stopped, and watched Lex’s breathing and listened to his heartbeat and the churning juice inside him.  
  
Then Clark bent in on himself, wishing he could see the look on Lex’s face as he began to thrust in and out of his ass at the same time he was deep throating his cock. Lex made an appreciative, loud moan. If his mom and Lionel were in bed together right now, there was no question as to what their boys were doing. He kept going, giving slow long thrusts. Lex was not quiet when making love. When Clark was sure he had the right angle to hit Lex’s prostate he sped just a little, hit a good rhythm and moved on Lex forcefully.  
  
Lex came quickly into Clark’s mouth. Clark sucked hard, taking in as much as he could. He knew Lex’s body well enough to know that he could make him come again. He pulled back, continued to thrust and began to massage his body again. His belly was going down, and Clark began to push on it, rubbing circles over it, up his sides, over his thighs, until Lex felt himself becoming aroused again.  
  
Clark hunched over and took him in his mouth again.  
  
“Oh, fuck, Clark you’re a god!” He grabbed onto Clark’s shoulder and held on for dear life. Clark just kept going, sucking him, fucking him, until he came, violently, shooting out about a gallon of that damned juice, and Clark kept taking it. It was a long, intense orgasm, and when he was through, and Clark pulled up, he could see Clark’s belly was a little distended. He pulled out of Lex and came copiously on the sheets.  
  
“Thanks.” Lex blinked at the sheer mass of it.  
  
“I figured the last thing you need is more fluid in you,” Clark panted. He crawled on top of Lex and gave him a gentle peck on the lips. “Feeling any better?”  
  
Lex looked down on his deflated belly. “A lot.”  
  
“Good. Cause we’re not done.”  
  
Lex raised his brows. Clark snuggled his head into Lex’s chest.   
  
”But give me a minute.”  
  
“You and me both, super cock.”   
  
Clark chuckled and took a breath. “I think the next part will be a little more familiar.”   
  
“Oh yeah? I get to fuck you now?”  
  
“Uh… actually, yeah, that’s what I had in mind.”  
  
Lex looked a little chuffed at the idea. “I shall try to rise to the occasion.”  
  
Clark shook his head at Lex. “So was it okay? I know you came, but was it alright like that?”  
  
“Alright? The word doesn’t do what you just did justice.”  
  
Clark beamed. Lex rubbed Clark’s chest, then rubbed circles on his overfull tummy.  
  
“That feels good.”  
  
“I feel bad. You’re ruining your figure for me.”  
  
Clark shrugged. “Who else am I going to look pretty for? Might as well get fat.”  
  
Lex continued to rub him and nestled his face into Clark’s hair. What wonderful hair his Clark had.  
  
Less than five minutes later, Lex kissed his brow and said, “Bend over, big boy.”  
  
Clark grinned in anticipation. Lex sat on his knees and wait for Clark to get up. The younger man scrambled up and leaned against the headboard.  
  
“The Adonis farm boy is a secret bottom. Who knew?”  
  
“Adonis? Really?”  
  
“Not anymore, butterball.” Lex pinched his round butt. “I’m kidding you, you know. Your ass is just amazing.”  
  
“You’re just saying that to make your cow of a boyfriend feel better.”  
  
“You’re not a cow.”  
  
“Mooooo.”  
  
“You’d better stop that…” Lex trailed his fingers along Clark’s body. He squeezed Clark’s love handles playfully and sat back and took in the scene. Here he was, with  _Clark_. He was probably going to die. But it wouldn’t be the sudden horrible death Lana faced. It wouldn’t be the lonely death he’d imagined for himself, either. Before getting together with Lana, he was seriously wondering if anyone would come to his funeral when the next psycho who shot him got lucky.  
  
He was a bit like his mother, Lex mused. He knew it was coming. Not much he could do about it, but make sure that his loved ones were protected. Not that he was giving up now, but a man had to make contingency plans.   
  
“Are you making evil plans back there?”  
  
“Just enjoying the view,” Lex said. He picked up the lube and squirted some onto his fingers.  
  
“You don’t have to prep me,” Clark told him. Lex looked up in surprise.   
  
”So aliens have magical lubricating anuses?”  
  
Clark pressed his crown against the headboard and shook with laughter. “ _No,_  I’m just not a blushing virgin like you.”  
  
“That’s not blush. It’s juice stain.”  
  
“I’m… well, I’m a little more made for this sort of thing.”  
  
“And I’m not the first guy who’s been back here. Got it.”  
  
“There haven’t been  _that_  many guys back there. Not the first… toy. By a long shot.”  
  
It was Lex’s turn to laugh. “Gotcha.”  
  
He rubbed some lube over his cock anyway and positioned himself behind Clark. Sliding a finger through Clark’s ass cheeks, he noticed that he didn’t have much hair down there. Appropriate, since he didn’t have much body hair at all. The scientific part of his brain filed that away for later. The sexual part of his brain told it to shut up, as he began to rub his finger over the tight little muscle waiting for him.   
  
”You don’t look that ready to me.” But he did look pretty clean. Lex leaned over and teased the area a little with the tip of his tongue. Clark jerked at the sensation. “You’re really sensitive here, aren’t you?”  
  
“Everyone is.”  
  
“Not that much.” Lex licked over his anus a few times, then started to give the area just behind his… ball???   
  
Lex stared in amazement at the large singular testicle for a moment before forcing the scientist to go whack off by himself in the corner of his mind with that bit of information so Lex could get back to his rim job. As he suspected, Clark more than enjoyed the tongue bath he was giving to that small area between his ball and his anus. The young man was hard again in less than a minute. Lex moved back to his ass, pushing his tongue into the hole and giving the cheeks a good couple of squeezes. He couldn’t stop feeling Clark’s ass with his hands. He remembered wanting to grab them so many times over the past years, but Clark was too young, too in love with Lana, too inaccessible… …But now the 6'2 hunk who had saved him so many times was hard and squirming underneath his touch, whining and moaning for more, and Lex allowed himself the luxury of touch for a little longer.  
  
This is what Lex was living for. He stopped torturing Clark and slid himself in. Clark had been right. It was easier to slide into him than it had been with other guys. Clark was warm and tight around him, and Clark contracted his muscles around Lex’s cock invitingly.  
  
“Mmm… Lex.”  
  
“You want me to go fast or slow?”  
  
”Fast. Hard.”  
  
Lex complied and began to push leisurely in and out, then faster and harder until he was pounding Clark, who cried out over and over, more more, harder Lex harder! What a pushy bottom. Lex clenched his teeth and pounded with all of his strength. He had no idea if Clark had a prostate or if he got the same things out of this that Lex would, but he tried to watch for Clark’s reactions. Before he could reach around to stroke Clark’s cock, Lex could feel Clark’s entire cavity twitching and jerking around him as he pumped into the huge man. Clark was coming again on the sheets, and he gave a long loud moan.  
  
Lex hadn’t though he’d be able to come a third time tonight, but the twitching sensation against his cock was too much, and he found himself erupting inside Clark regardless. He panted heavily, and Clark relaxed onto his belly, with Lex lying on top of him, spent.   
  
They had stayed their bonelessly together for awhile, getting sleepy, when they heard a knock on the door.   
  
“I don’t mean to interrupt, but are you two quite finished?” Lex’s father’s voice boomed from the other side. Clark could hear his mother giggling. Lionel was not quite so pleased. She smacked his arm and asked him if he’d rather have a gay son or a dead one. Lionel didn’t respond.  
  
Clark decided to keep that exchange to himself for a while.  
  
“Uh, yeah,” Clark answered sheepishly.  
  
“How about you guys?” Lex asked cheekily.  
  
Martha started to cry and whispered to Lionel, “Oh, thank you, god. He’s back. I thought he’d never come around after what he saw.”  
  
“Lex is my son, Martha,” Lionel began walking back down the hallway. “If nothing else, I know that he will survive whatever we can throw at him. That much has been made clear.”  
  
That, Clark might mention to Lex. Later. For the moment, he snuggled into the mess that he and Lex had made together, and listened as Lex’s breathing slowed.  
  
The difference in Lex’s step was apparent the moment they had gotten up to get a shower the morning after. He had joked over breakfast with Clark about giving him blueberry babies since they hadn’t used condoms. Clark had rubbed his belly and said it would certainly solve some of his problems if he were eating for two. Or six.  
  
Their parents had walked in to the sounds of laughter. Clark coaxed Lex into eating a little bit. Lex had called for some of his work materials to be brought to him, so he could get back to working on a cure and keeping up with LuthorCorp’s activities for his eventual return to the business world.  
  
”It’s good to see you back on track, Lex.” Lionel’s tone was a bit harsh. His son’s face was still drawn, and there was still deep sadness in his eyes. He was still very weary and not able to move around the house much, but he was up and in the world again.  
  
Lex leaned back, his feet up and pecked away at the keyboard with one hand. Clark had told him in the shower what his father had said. It made him nervous.  
  
 _Five Days Later- The Planet_  
  
Chloe jumped up, eager to see Clark when he came in. Clark looked nervous. He didn’t want to be away from Lex for too long. She ignored that and drew his attention to a file on her computer.   
  
After all this time, a lead had come up, and she was fairly certain she had tracked the creation of the blueberries back to a lab on the outskirts of Smallville. The doctors had discovered that they been created with old-fashioned mad biochemical engineering, no additional radiation required. What they couldn’t figure is how the retrovirus had been able to breach Lex’s defenses.  
  
“This was a hit. It was covered by the epidemic. Someone wanted to hurt Lex, hurt him bad. And they didn’t care who else got in the way.” Chloe was resolute. She looked up at Clark’s face, into his eyes. There was something there she didn’t recognize, something dark and not at all friendly. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Where’s the lab? I’ll go see if I can get an antidote out of them.”  
  
Chloe gave him the address and ignored a nagging fear at the back of her mind. Clark made a pit stop first.  
  
The lab wasn’t hard to find. And that made Clark all the angrier. He x-rayed the building from the outside. It looked like an abandoned barn. He looked under the ground and found a fairly extensive lab. One person was in there, a tall woman with short dark hair wearing a lab coat. He made no pretense upon entering.  
  
“I want the antidote.”  
  
The woman turned around. Her wide, dark eyes bore into him. She was thinner than he remembered, but he still recognized her.  
  
“Helen! I thought you were dead.”  
  
“You were supposed to. When you get saved from a Luthor, you keep your fucking mouth shut.” She turned from him bitterly. Clark was immediately across the room, holding her up by the neck.  
  
“Antidote.”  
  
“There isn’t one. I guess Lex is going to have to get used to being a blueberry.”  
  
Clark dropped her and stepped back. “That isn’t an option.”  
  
”Eventually, you’re not going to be able to help him, you know.” She rubbed her neck and raked her eyes over him. “His defenses must be wearing down by now. He’ll pop like the rest of them, or his body will give out from the struggle. I’d give him another two weeks, tops.”  
  
“Lex can’t die,” Clark whispered. She smirked.  
  
“Everyone dies, Clark.”  
  
He paused, thinking. “Who is behind this? You? You came up with this by yourself?”  
  
“Vicki helped. But she got demanding. We came up with the idea over drinks. Lex is so fanatical about his weight. When he took her company down for a second time, started dating that whiny little squirrel, we decide it was time someone gave Lex what he deserved.”  
  
“No one deserves that!” Clark shouted in disgust. “You’ve murdered innocent people with this! You’ve been torturing Lex for weeks!”  
  
“This man left me for dead in an airplane!” She spat back angrily. Clark shook his head in disbelief.  
  
“After you did the same thing to him.”  
  
“Of course you defend him. Of  _course_. He was always so fucking  _obsessed with you._  No matter what I did, he was always more focused on you than me, Clark. You know that?” Helen’s lips twisted cruelly. “I saw that little shrine of his to you. So fucking disgusting. He was in love with you. And if it weren’t for you, maybe he would have been able to love me…”  
  
“Even though you were working for his father? Even though you sold his father my blood?”  
  
“He never had to know that. That’s what it means to be with Lex. You have to protect him from himself. Get the fucking alien away from him.” She looked up, sheer hatred in her eyes. “But he doesn’t listen. He chose you over me. So many times. He never came to me when his father threw him out. Or hurt him. You. He asked for my help to not become his father. But he wanted  _you_.”  
  
She shook her head and looked down at the slides on her lab table.  
  
“Well, enjoy it, Clark. Because you’ve taken his devotion for granted, and your time with him is going to be so short and painful..”  
  
Clark walked over to her, his expression blank. She glared up at him.   
  
He grabbed her face roughly and forced a blueberry inside. She choked on it, but it was too late. She had tasted the juice. Her eyes widened in fear.  
  
“Antidote?” Clark asked again. She pointed frantically to the far wall. “It’s a wall.”  
  
She tried to move over there quickly, but her legs were already swelling together at the thighs. “Help me!”  
  
Clark picked her up and set her by the wall. She moved her quickly filling hands over the white surface, and it opened into a panel, where she pressed her hand.  
  
 _DNA MATCH FAILED._  
  
“Fuck...” She looked down at her expanding belly in abject fear. Clark rolled his eyes at her and punched through the wall, tearing away the barrier between him and the antidote.   
  
”Where is it?”  
  
She pointed again, and Clark pulled out a tray of samples. “This?”  
  
“Yes! Give it to me!”  
  
Clark took the tray and wrapped it up securely in one of the nearby cases. He pulled out a vial and moved toward her. Then pushed her over. She wiggled her arms and legs, but could not get up.   
  
“Clark!”  
  
“Get it yourself.” He put the antidote on the table beside her and left with the rest.  
  
Clark was in the air when he heard the explosion.  
  
 _That Evening, 8:01pm- Kent Farm_  
  
Clark drove back in the truck. His entire body was tensed with anticipation. They had tested the antidote on rats, and while the process wasn’t pretty, the antidote purged the foreign DNA and made them resistant to reinfection. Helen had wanted that antidote. He figured that it must work for humans. But why did they have so much of it on hand? And why hadn’t she taken it already?  
  
Too many questions. He was already at the farm, and Lex had come out to greet him. He was wearing one of Clark’s blue tees and a flannel shirt over it. Clark smiled at the image of Lex in his clothes. Even when he was a little ripened, Lex looked adorable walking around in them. Clark ran to him and gave him a tight hug.  
  
“Hey, what’s going on? Where have you been?” Lex searched his face for answers. Clark was blown away. Less than a month ago, they had been at one another’s throats. Now…  
  
“I have the cure, Lex.”  
  
Weary eyes brightened. “Are you serious? Does it work?”  
  
“I went to the lab and had it tested. Chloe found the lab where it was being kept, um, before that. It’s going to work. You’ll be cured.”  
  
Lex gaped, speechless. Martha and Lionel came out of the house to see what was going on.  
  
“Clark found a cure,” Lex announced. Clark frowned. His heart had sped up, and it was beating a little oddly. His grip on him tightened, and Lex looked at him oddly.  
  
“A cure? From where?” Lionel asked.   
  
“Helen. And Victoria. I’ll explain later, but first I want to make sure… NOW.” Clark demanded. He pulled on the flannel impatiently, remembering Helen’s prediction.  
  
”I’m not going to argue with you. Do you think I  _like_  being a blueberry?”  
  
“Wait, wait!” Lionel protested. He put his hand on Lex’s other shoulder. “Has it been tested? We should be more thorough about this!”  
  
Lex hesitated. “Are you sure, Clark?”  
  
Clark put his hand to Lex’s chest, and then cupped his face. “I’m sure. Let’s go.”  
  
“And where are you going? Back to the lab?” Martha asked.  
  
“Out to the field. This is… going to be a little messy. It’s going to push all the foreign material out of your body.”  
  
Lex raised a brow high, but nodded and followed him. Lionel rubbed his temple and went back inside, frustrated.  
  
Clark steeled himself for what he was about to put Lex through.  
  
The juice swelled him up so quickly, ballooning Lex’s body more than it had yet, and Lex yelled in fright and pain. Clark held his hand tightly and promised over and over that it would be okay.  
  
Then the juice came pouring out.  
And pouring.  
And pouring.  
  
Until Lex collapsed limply into Clark’s arms. He was conscious, but he couldn’t move. Everything hurt too much. Clark scooped his naked body into his arm and carried him inside to wash him off.  
  
 _10:26pm- 33.1_  
  
The doctors had put Lex in a large hospital bed and attached him to several monitors to check his heart and vitals and an IV to feed him. Clark sat beside him, stroking his pale, creamy skin. Lex opened his eyes groggily. They had been permanently stained from their former grayish blue to a pale violet.  
  
“You’re awake.”  
  
“Again. Sorry I keep dropping off.”  
  
“Your blood sugar is really low. Your body is trying to heal itself. You’re on an assload of painkillers. I’m not surprised.” Clark kissed his brow, then his nose, then his lips. “You’re so incredibly beautiful.”  
  
“I look like a cancer victim.”  
  
“You look beautiful,” Clark insisted. Lex moved his hand a little, as much as he could, and touched Clark’s hand with his own. Clark smiled and took his hand, squeezing gently. “Everything’s going to be okay, now.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
“He knows.”  
  
”Yeah.” Clark garnered that Lex was talking about his father. “He has for awhile.”  
  
“Well, that worries me. That, and when I can drag myself out of this bed again, I’m going to have to pry the company back away from him.”  
  
“Maybe you can start with LexCorp. You took Victoria’s company, so maybe-“  
  
“My father took Victoria’s company. After the ‘Hardwick Flood,’ remember?”  
  
Clark stroked Lex’s hand with his thumb gently. “Did he?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Clark’s face hardened.  
  
”Don’t.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Whatever you’re planning. I haven’t asked what happened with Helen, and you don’t have to tell me. Legally, you’re in the clear. She’s already been pronounced dead.”  
  
“I…” Clark glared at nothing in particular.  
  
“I’m not going to ask. But don’t take on my father alone. What are you thinking? Tell me.”  
  
The two of them looked into one another’s eyes. Clark leaned over and embraced him, whispering in Lex’s ear.  
  
“Do you think he could have done this?”  
  
“He hasn’t been afraid of catching it from me. From the beginning. He’s probably taken the antidote.”  
  
Clark considered that. “Someone gave Helen the samples she needed to make sure this thing could hurt you.”  
  
“You heard him telling your mother that nothing would kill me. He didn’t want me dead,” Lex returned. Clark understood now.  
  
“Just out of the way.”   
  
“You think Chloe found that dropped lead because Lionel Luthor grew  _careless_?”  
  
Clark sat back up and knitted his brows. “What do we do?”  
  
“I’ve been busy preparing in case I wasn’t there to protect you. Your mother. Chloe. I had to be sure that something was in place in case I…” Lex turned his head a little bit. “All you have to do is not ask. Don’t ask questions, Clark. Just this once.”  
  
The next day, The Daily Planet ran two big headlines:  
  
LUTHOR JUNIOR CURED.  
  
LUTHOR SENIOR DIES OF HEART ATTACK.  
  
Clark didn’t ask questions.  
  
 _Two Months Later_  
  
Clark and Lex had visited Lana Lang’s grave that morning. Lex let himself lean back into Clark’s arms and sighed. They had decided not to care what the press said and simply came out as a couple. A story about Clark caring for a sick Lex and then subsequently falling in love, without the lurid details, wasn’t that hard to buy. And after the stock jump that had occurred simply from switching the reigns back into Lex’s hands, the point or two that it had dropped due to his personal life didn’t mean much.  
  
They chatted with Lana’s grave, asking her to be forgiving that they didn’t come by with such vigilance as she did to the dead, but to know that Lex had dedicated a new wing of the hospital to her. He had suspected that she wouldn’t appreciate naming a disease that turned you into a giant bloated ball of juice after her. So the new children’s wing was the Lana Lang memorial. They told her that they were very much together and thanked her for that.  
  
Lex wasn’t sure that Lana would have liked that so much, but one benefit of talking to the dead is that they usually don’t bother to talk back.  
  
From there they headed back to Metropolis to have lunch. When Martha came over to hug him, Lex jumped back and apologized. Chloe looked on sympathetically, and Lois played with a breadstick. In spite of everything, Lex really hadn’t been the same since the Blue Plague. He still flinched whenever someone touched him. He still gagged at the taste of anything sweet, or anything that he had eaten during the period of his illness. It all tasted like blueberries to him. The tabloids delighted in taking pictures of Lex, calling him an addict, an anorexic.   
  
It wasn’t true, of course. However, Lex had switched to an entirely vegan diet to reorient his tastes and was still skinnier than a rail. It was hard not to make the comparison, but when Jimmy made a joke to that effect, Clark assured him firmly that it wasn’t true.  
  
“I’ve gained almost ten pounds since I left the hospital bed. Leave me alone,” Lex snapped. Clark rubbed his neck with one hand, trying to diminish his irritability.  
  
“We’re just worried about you, honey.” Martha resisted the urge to take his hand. Losing Lionel had been hard on her, especially since she hadn’t known that he suffered from heart problems too. But still, he was getting older, and who knew what he’d done in his youth? She hoped that Lex would become more comfortable with her eventually. She suspected that this was one of Clark’s relationships that would last a long time, for better or worse.  
  
“Eating a steak might help.” Lois opened her mouth wide and bit down on a big piece of prime rib. Lex curled his lip.  
  
”I changed my diet because nothing in my former palette was appetizing anymore. I can’t tell you how wonderful watching you eat makes me feel.” Lex forked a carrot and lifted it to his lip. “Besides, my weight is none of your business. Can we talk about something else? Or at least focus on someone else’s weight?”  
  
“Like mine?” Clark joked. Lex mooed in his direction. Clark had managed to lose most of what he’d gained. Lex was very proud of him. And Mercy, his personal trainer, who was the complete opposite of her name.  
  
The conversation shifted to politics and Martha’s senate win. Lex had backed her as a candidate, since his health had been too uncertain for him to run. Then the conversation shifted to jobs and school, and Clark heading to MetU soon.  
  
Lex left the lunch feeling pretty well, and he and Clark decided to take a stroll.  
  
“Isn’t it strange? How different things are.” Lex took Clark’s hand in his own. Tabloids be damned.  
  
“I don’t think they’re that different. I mean, I… when I talked to Helen, she reminded me how googly we used to be over each other.”  
  
“You were too young.”  
  
“Is that want stopped you?”  
  
“That and your father’s shotgun, yeah.”  
  
Clark smiled and bumped his hip. “I think things haven’t changed so much. I think we’re just… back on track.”  
  
“Are we?”  
  
Clark threw an arm wide. “To our destiny! Oops!”  
  
He’d accidentally hit some woman and made her drop her bags. She glared at them and stalked off. “Sorry!”  
  
“Dork.”  
  
“Who’s the dork? You have secret labs all over the place. And you collect comic books.”  
  
“So… we’re pretty good right now.”  
  
Clark nodded and tilted his head curiously. Lex slid his hand around Clark’s waist.   
  
“How about we celebrate your return to the land of the fit and fine with a new wardrobe?”  
  
Clark’s expression darkened. “I like t-shirts and flannel.”  
  
”I don’t mind t-shirts and flannel. But you can wear more than the three shirts you have, Clark. Really. I’ll pay.”  
  
“You are so mean to me.”  
  
“I’m evil. Cope with it.” Lex pulled on his hand towards a shop on the street. “Can it hurt to look?”  
  
”What are we looking for?”  
  
Lex rolled his eyes. “Maternity dresses.”  
  
Clark laughed and went inside with him. “For all the berrybabies you’re going to give me?”  
  
”Heir and a spare, Clark. The rest is gravy.” Lex snapped his fingers at the attendant. A cute redhead, who recognized them and looked a bit star struck. “Hello, Michelle. What colors would you recommend for my friend here?”  
  
“Oh. I think he’d look lovely in green.”  
  
Lex beamed as Clark pouted.  
  
“And maybe reds.”  
  
Lex sighed. “Nothing primary colored, though. Maybe a deep rose red? Or sangria?”  
  
“Of course. Let me go look.”  
  
Clark smiled and pulled Lex into his arms.  
  
“Why, yes. This is in public.”  
  
“I don’t care.” He snapped his own fingers at the attendant. She blushed, seeing them together, then smiled widely. He could tell she thought they were cute. “Do you have any nice purples here? Nothing too froofy or obnoxious. Like…”  
  
“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend that color on you, sir.”  
  
“I mean for him.”  
  
She took a good look at him. “I think that would work for you. Oh!”  
  
She started and looked closer. “Your eyes are violet! They’re beautiful!”  
  
Lex cleared his throat in embarrassment.  
  
“I’m sorry. I’ve never seen anyone with eyes that color before. I’ll look for some darker shades for you too. They should bring out your eyes.”  
  
She darted off again.  
  
“I don’t know that I want my eyes brought out,” Lex admitted softly. Clark cupped his hand over Lex’s scalp.   
  
“Want contacts?”  
  
Lex pursed his lips. “Of course not. I don’t wear a toupee. I’m not going to hide this bit of freakishness either.”  
  
“Good. Because I love it.”  
  
”You love that I’m a freak.”  
  
”I love that you deal with being a freak so much better than I do.” Clark kissed him gently. “I love every part of you.”  
  
“Do you.” Lex melted into his arms and tried to relax. He shivered a little.  
  
“What? Something wrong?”  
  
“No.”  
  
The attendant came back with a rack of shirts for them to try on. They went into the dressing room together, and Clark could hear her giggling outside the room with another girl about how wonderful they were. Lex picked out a few shirts and took off his own.  
  
“Are we going to your mother’s for Christmas or are we… I don’t know. What’s going on with that?” He tossed his shirt to a chair in the dressing room and stretched his shoulders. It was a little uncanny. After his body had healed from the antidote, Lex had found that he was quite unusually flexible from the whole experience. He wasn’t sure what to do with the new ability, but Clark had found so many uses for it in the bedroom already.  
  
“My mom will probably be flying back and forth from Washington. I don’t know that she’ll have the energy to do it all herself this year.”  
  
“I would hardly expect her to.” Lex watched Clark undressing and wondered how clichéd it would be for them to have a little fun in the dressing room.  
  
“So maybe we could have it at the new penthouse. Will it be ready?”  
  
“Certainly. But she might want to oversee the preparations. I… don’t really know anything about Christmas.”  
  
“Evil?”  
  
“Jewish, which you probably knew from our bedroom activities. Atheist, too, actually. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m sure your family has traditions you’d like to see continued.” Lex slid the silky shirt and began to fasten the buttons. It was a rich color of violet. He thought that perhaps he liked it.  
  
“Jewish? Should we have a menor-thingie?”  
  
Lex chuckled. “No, I’ve never practiced.”  
  
“Oh. Well, I knew the Atheist part too. I pay attention, you know. Yeah, I guess I’ll talk with my mom about what to do.” Clark fussed with his own sleeve buttons futilely until Lex came over and began to fasten them for him. Clark reached over and fixed Lex’s collar as he did so. “It’s a little loose.”  
  
“I’ll have to find a way to increase my caloric intake over the holidays. You know I’m trying.”  
  
“You’re fine. We can have it tailored. They do that here, I’m sure.”   
  
Clark pulled Lex in front of him and wrapped his arms around Lex’s sparse middle, pinning him in place.  
  
“Well, look at that,” Lex said dryly. “We match.”  
  
“That’s not news, Lex.” Clark lifted his chin. He was so proud the little under chin chub he’d had was gone. “We look pretty good. We should send out Christmas cards with our pictures on them.”  
  
“How vain!”  
  
Clark sniffed his neck. “We’ve always matched. From day one.”  
  
“Black  _does_  go with anything.”  
  
“And once you go black…”  
  
”Oh, don’t  _say_  that.” Lex turned around and looked him in the eye. “See? See how pretty you are in nice clothing? You don’t even have to give up your precious red.”  
  
“I can’t wear this around the farm.”  
  
“No. Just… on other occasions.” Lex’s lips were twitching, as he looked Clark over. His violet eyes were gleaming almost predatorily. Clark started to look worried.  
  
“…What?”  
  
“How would you like to get a little clichéd and help me with my caloric intake at the same time?” Lex asked, starting to unbutton Clark’s red shirt. Clark grinned like a naughty schoolboy and put his hands on the deep violet one they’d given to Lex.  
  
The attendants’ giggles grew louder and happier. This would be a day they’d never forget.


End file.
